Dark Recollections
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Authors: Chris Philbrook
ADRIAN’S UNDEAD DIARY
Chris Philbrook
Book One
DARK RECOLLECTIONS
Adrian’s Undead Diary: Dark Recollections
Copyright © 2010 Christopher Philbrook
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.
Published in the United States of America
First Publishing Date October, 2010
All characters in this compilation are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design and interior layout by Alan MacRaffen
For my Dad.
I am the man I am today, because of the man you were for me yesterday.
I miss you, I love you.
-Chris
Also by Chris Philbrook:
Elmoryn - The Kinless Trilogy
Book One: Wrath of the Orphans
Coming Soon:
Book Two: A Motive for Massacre
Book Three
Adrian’s Undead Diary
Book One: Dark Recollections
Coming Soon:
Book Two: Alone No More
Book Three: Midnight
Book Four
Book Five
Book Six
Book Seven
Book Eight
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Auburn Lake Preparatory Academy map
September 2010
September 21
st
It’s pretty fucking cold out tonight. The big ass plastic thermometer on the tree outside says its 35F out tonight. I’m glad I figured out where the emergency generator is here, otherwise I would be freezing my balls off now. Despite the fact that this place was kind of a bitch to clear out, I’m glad I did it. It’s got everything I need to survive for a long time.
I don’t even really know where to start. It’s a Tuesday today. At least I know what day it is. Someone in the main office building was wise enough to buy their calendar early this year so it’ll be easy for me to keep track of the days until the end of next year. After that I guess I’ll have to use some of the graph paper and make my own calendar. That’s being pretty optimistic though. The way the last few months have been I’ll be goddamn lucky to make Christmas, let alone next Christmas.
I decided to start writing this mainly to keep track of my daily activities and to have a way to purge my nugget. Frankly I talk to myself way too goddamn much to be mentally healthy and I was always told that writing a journal helped. Sooo.. let’s call this my journal. Thank God for spell check. I also realize that now is not the best time to be writing. I’m using up some of my gasoline to run the generator, which is basically a waste, and honestly having any lights on at night draws them in. Moths to a flame as the old saying goes. But I can’t sleep and I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time now. Having the electricity back has set a fire under my ass to do this.
My name is Adrian Ring. I lived what I would now call as only a moderately successful life. I was happy, but I had pretty low standards. I had a girlfriend, I had a small condo downtown, I still have my cat (score!), and I have thus far avoided being eaten by the undead. Surprise! There’s the twist in the story. I fucking love horror movies. Like seriously. I watched well over a thousand of them and always used to plot and plan should zombies ever rise from the dead and take over the world. Irony in all that is that when the shit hit the fan it happened so fast that any kind of plan would’ve been almost impossible to execute.
I was at work the night it started. I used to work third shift at a private school as a dorm supervisor. It was out of the way up in the hills outside of downtown, and only had about 100 students. Over 100k a year to attend. Very elite, very snooty, and basically the best job you could ask for.
I had 9 hour shifts where I basically just made sure the kids didn’t run away, and had their needs taken care of. Most nights I would do maybe an hour of work. I spent the rest of the time fucking around online looking at stupid videos and screwing around on the big ole f-book. God I wish I could update my status right now. Something really witty like “hasn’t been eaten yet, so is pretty stoked.” Or maybe something like, “wishes he grabbed more bullets when he raided the gun store in town.” I dunno. Something cool.
Anyway, I was at work when it all hit. Working nights meant I was totally alone aside from the three other overnights and the sleeping kids, so when I checked the news websites and saw the few updates about “zombie hoaxes” I laughed. After a few hours more and more popped up on other websites, but I didn’t take it too seriously. After all Halloween was coming up soon I figured it was some kind of stunt to promote a new movie or tv show. It wasn’t until the morning when half the day shift people didn’t show that I really realized something was up.
I went home as I normally do, and nothing seemed amiss. I called my girlfriend on the short drive home and we chatted. I asked her about it and she basically said she thought it was a hoax or some stunt. She was still half asleep though, so who knows what she really saw or heard on tv. Plus she was getting ready for work herself. She was gone by the time I got home, and I never saw her again. I think she was killed at work, or maybe on the drive home from work. I’ll never know. The cities are far too dangerous for me to attempt to go to, and to be honest, as much as I loved her, it scares the shit out of me when I think of getting eaten alive. If you can read this babe, I love you.
I went to bed after watching a few minutes of the news and eating a banana. I can still remember the weird vibe on the good morning shows. Kinda tense, but sort of laughing it off. I can still remember the look on the dude’s face as he reported it, kinda like he was waiting for an “april fools!” to pop up on his teleprompter. Never came I guess. So I went to bed.
I slept pretty good until about 3pm. I remember distinctly waking with a start, jarred awake. It took me a few minutes to piece together what actually woke me up, but the second gunshot kinda solved that riddle. It came from outside my window in the condo complex and I knew instantly something was very wrong.
My curtains are taped right to the window frames to block out the light, so I pulled on my gym shorts and hustled downstairs to look out the glass slider on the back side of the house. The action had ended by the time I got down there, but about thirty feet from where my place is I could clearly see a dead body laying in the parking lot. Have you ever seen someone take a shotgun blast to the head? Its horrible. There’s no head left to speak of, first off, and secondly the body just empties the blood out of what’s left of the head. More of a neck by that point really.
The body, a woman incidentally, was kind of laying towards my place, kinda downhill, and the blood was running into the mulch at the foot of the pine tree right behind my place. I’ve seen dead bodies before, I’ve been around violence plenty of times, but this was weird. It was in my neighborhood. You know, your sanctuary? I imagine the way I felt looking at her head-stump empty was a lot like watching your house burn down, or coming home to realize your house had been broken into. I felt violated. Anyway, I grabbed my sweatshirt, my cell phone, slipped my sandals on and sprinted out the back, dialing 911 as I went. I tripped over a root from the fucking pine tree and ate shit on the way, but I got there.
She was dead, of that there was no doubt. Her head was absolute demolished. She was wearing a garish flowery pattern shirt that looked a lot like the kind of shirts that a pediatric nurse would wear. She definitely had pants that looked a lot like those greenish scrub pants you see nurses wearing. I made my decision. Headless shotgun woman had been a nurse only a short time ago. At that point I realized my 911 call wasn’t going through. Getting the all circuits’ busy bullshit, which instantly set off my oh-shit radar. My groggy ass brain finally started to put two and two together. The zombie shenanigans from last night may not have been a hoax.
I don’t own a gun. My girlfriend was kinda twitchy, and she had a little bit of a temper, and I really didn’t want a firearm around that cocktail. It was far too foreseeable to see me getting shot because she thought I was a robber or something. So no guns. I did however own a few very high quality swords. Competently made and purchased at a few nerd festivals over the years. I really didn’t want to grab a sword and just go driving around on the outside chance that this was just a random shooting, but I knew I had to get the fuck back inside one way or the other. If this was a random shooting, the random shooter was still pretty fucking nearby and I was not in the mood to get head-stumped myself.